School budget goes to a third round

HOLDEN — The board of selectmen will recommend town meeting voters defeat a request for an additional $304,000 in voluntary payments for the town’s share of costs for the FY06 Wachusett Regional School District budget.

The board took the 4-1 vote at its meeting Monday.

The special town meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at Mountview Middle School. Princeton voters meet tonight to decide whether to support the school committee’s request for voluntary school payments; Paxton and Rutland also meet October 11. Sterling’s meeting will be held October 24. Four of five towns must approve the budget before it goes into effect.

In Holden the school budget-related article known as Article 3 asks voters to raise no more than $304,363, for the town’s share of regional school costs, to supplement the prior appropriations made in May and voluntary payments approved in August.

Unlike the last two town meetings, however, the article is not tied to a Proposition 2 1/2 override.

This is the third time the school budget will come before voters. In May voters rejected a proposed $60.1 million budget, and then a $59.9 million budget in August.

In May, Holden voters approved $17.5 million in required school spending. Voters rejected articles that dealt with additional voluntary school payments totaling approximately $2.3 million. Of that, nearly $1.5 million was tied to an override.

Voters in August supported raising and appropriating $1.118 million for the town’s voluntary share of the costs and expenses of the WRSD for FY06, and rejected a measure that would tie an additional $565,850 in voluntary payments to the successful passage of an override.

On September 12, the school committee proposed a budget of $59.3 million, which resulted in about $1.4 million in voluntary payments from Holden, about $304,000 higher than what voters approved in August, town officials have said. With new unexpected additional revenue to the town, officials said the cuts from municipal side would total about $129,000.

“The school committee has not cut its budget at all,” said Selectman David White Sr. “They’ve changed estimates of revenues, they’ve changed estimates of expenses and through all those changes, they have netted a reduction in assessment.”

White said selectmen must remember that the Wachusett Regional School District FY06 budget is built on a two-year effort to bring school services and programs to FY02 levels. He said “every single dollar” of new growth is going toward the education budget while town funding has been pushed “to the back burner.”

He said he would not support any school committee requests until they commit to finding a permanent solution to the annual budget impasse.

“We have to draw a line in the sand,” he said.

Selectman Kenneth O’Brien, a supporter of the FY06 school budget, who cast the dissenting vote at Monday’s meeting, disagreed with White’s statement that every new dollar goes toward education. “I have to insist that’s just not accurate,” he said.

Continuing his argument, O’Brien said the “school district has needs, it has problems.”

O’Brien said he did not have an ax to grind with the municipal budget or with any department. “They do a fine job with all the things they are charged with doing,” he said. “But, at the same time, I want to make sure we give the children of the Wachusett Regional School District the opportunities they deserve, too. This is an insignificant amount of money in the grand scheme of things.”

Selectwoman Kimberly Ferguson agreed with White, saying that while everyone wants to fund education and municipal services at full levels “there’s only so much to go around.” She said the time has come to find a permanent way to deal with the annual budget difficulty.

Selectman James Jumonville said that while he supports education, he was elected to respond to municipal concerns.

Jumonville expressed concern that Holden school committee members were speaking against another article on the warrant that addresses the future of how both budgets would be formed.

Article 2, also known as the Joint Resolution, asks for a non-binding vote to establish a policy limiting future town and educational budgets to the requirements of Proposition 2 1/2. The measure further specifies that if a budget request exceeds the limits of Proposition 2 1/2, the excess will be subject to the passage of an override.

The board voted 4-1 to support the measure, with O’Brien the lone dissenter.

“Other communities do this in the commonwealth, it’s not a new thing,” he said. “It can be done.”

O’Brien said he supports the Joint Resolution theory, but the town needs to be more flexible to meet the needs of the town. O’Brien said there appears to be some disagreement about where the needs lie.

“I think it’s best decided through the legislative process with town meetings and having the school committee develop their budgets independent of the needs of the municipality, so people can understand the competing needs,” O’Brien said.

He also noted that the district was about to welcome a new school superintendent, and it’s hoped that he would bring a more forward and cooperative budget process to the table.

“You still have the same school committee who took the votes,” Sullivan noted.

If Article 3 or Article 4, a citizen’s petition that asks voters to support the school budget, passes, selectmen will recommend voters endorse a list of municipal budget cuts featured at the end of the town meeting warrant in Article 8.

Those cuts will be needed in order to have a balanced budget, town officials have said.

Those cuts include $23,300 from the general government portion of the budget, $35,000 in the public safety department; $58,500 in the department of public works; $4,500 in human services and $3,000 in the town’s culture department.

If Article 3 or 4 fails, the board will recommend a defeat of Article 8.

Selectmen, in a 4-1 vote, recommended a defeat of the citizen’s petition article as well, with O’Brien dissenting.

Holden School Committee Representative Margaret Watson, who listened to Monday’s discussion but did not speak, said Tuesday morning she was disappointed with the board’s vote on Article 3.

“I was hoping the latest offer the school committee made would be acceptable to everyone,” she said. “We thought it was a fair offer.

“The criticisms they made [at last night’s meeting] are really moot,” she said. “We have lowered the budget and we’ve given them savings [from budget line items that have come in lower than projected]. We’ve given them $417,000 from our Excess and Deficiency account, leaving us with $50,000, so we’ve dipped into our reserves, as well.”

Watson said Monday’s votes and comments “don’t indicate a spirit of cooperation from town officials.”

She said a number of WRSDC members plan to speak to the budget motion at town meeting, and a number of parents are planning to speak to the warrant article regarding the joint resolution.